


tall & short

by nullvalue



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, cw: suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2019-08-08 09:54:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16427162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nullvalue/pseuds/nullvalue
Summary: a story about two girls dressed all in black doing urbex in my brain





	1. rooftop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [uel](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=uel).



Drinking beer on the rooftop, two girls-- one short one tall both dressed all in black.

"It's a good view," says the short one.

Ten thousand tendrils all writhe beneath them, covering the streets, slowly crushing the cars. 

"Told you," says the taller one. 

They're drinking Orion. It's made in Okinawa, and it's pretty good. 

"I wonder what they feel like."

"The flesh tendrils?"

"Yeah. They look like they're covered in regular skin. I wonder if they're warm and soft."

"Don't think they're soft. They look like big hard cocks to me."

In the distance a tall building collapses. Hundreds of enormous fleshy things burst out the top and crush everything they land on.

"If they keep going like this I'll get to touch one eventually."

"Yeah." The taller one sounds reflective. "We might survive if we try to stay on top of them."

"And then what? Where do we go from here?"

"Dunno," replies the taller one. "I was just thinking about how we could cut them open and try eating them, and if they're edible that'd be food sorted for a while."

"Depends on the diet," says the shorter one, tilting her head back and slowly pouring beer in the general vicinity of her mouth.

"Don't think I've ever seen them eat anything."

"Well, it's like..." She burps loudly, dripping with beer. "If they're herbivores they'd be good eating, but if they're carnivores they might not be so good."

"All they really do is multiply and break stuff."

"Haha, yeah, same."

With one hand the shorter one pushes the taller one over, and straddles her. Their fingers interlace, they kiss, and then they fuck while the world ends.


	2. tracks

Walking along the train tracks, two girls-- one short one tall both dressed all in black.

"Cargo trains," says the shorter one with an air of academia, "are best used to transport large quantities of low-value freight which is not time sensitive. Like coal."

"Wow," says the tall one.

The train tracks are elevated far above the ground on one big thin mountainous wedge. Everything below the two girls is burning, everywhere. But the smoke is being blown out to sea and the air is mostly clear up here above the ocean of billowing black.

"Their ideal use is directly opposed to planes, which are best used to transport small volume, high-value cargo."

"Yeah, I watched that video too."

The shorter girl has been exposed. She was trying to sound smart but now she feels stupid for being called out. 

"...Yeah, I was just reciting the video."

"That's okay."

The air is a little strained for a while, not to mention cold. The shorter girl is balancing precariously on a rail, even though falling to the left would make her plummet thousands of feet into the ocean of smoke and flame. The tall girl is walking in the middle of the tracks.

The tall girl has a vape pen, hexagonal, purple. She exhales cannabis vapor, mixed with the condensation of her breath in the cold air.

"I have a lot of games about trains at home," offers the tall girl in an attempt to disperse the awkwardness.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, but every time I get excited and boot one up, I somehow lose interest almost immediately."

"Oh."

They keep walking in silence until they find a spot to take a nap together, pressed close for warmth as the fires rage quietly below.


	3. suicide by inaction

A short girl dressed all in black sits down among the rocks and grey sand on a glistening shore  
The wave rolls in, slow  
  
cold  
  
loud  
  
rushing  
  
the tide has risen to her waist and her legs are numb in the pacific water  
the markings on the old wood above her head say it'll go higher  
She sits there in a sort of haze-- her eyes are foggy-- thoughts disjointed  
  
and all  
  
through  
  
her  
  
body  
  
this slow, heavy, pulsing feeling  
a shapeless malaise that pulls her downward like a second gravity  
so that even the simplest actions are a herculean struggle  
it's rooted her in place and her heart feels tight and cold like her salt soaked skin  
it's too scary to jump in all at once so she just  
  
Does  
  
Nothing  
  
And feels the water slowly rise


	4. help

A tall girl dressed all in black lays splayed across a sand swept dock Old  
  
wood creaks beneath Her  
unresponsive body and She  
hears the tide coming in with the smell of cold tears She  
  
has to move.  
  
A short girl dressed all in black is sitting there  
the taller one can see her there  
how long has she been sitting there But  
  
her body is seized up  
a dark pulsating force crushes her into the ground like a second gravity  
it's painful and she needs to cry but nothing comes to her impassive face  
it's painful  
  
But  
  
She  
  
Has  
  
To  
  
Move  
  
Reaching forward is agony She  
pushes her fingers down in the crack between the planks She  
drags her limp body forward, slowly as the rising tide, grits her teeth  
It's painful  
  
 _maybeitwonthelpshedoesntknowwhatshesdoingmaybeitllmakethingsworsemaybeitsherfaulttobeginwithmaybeshes_  
 _outofherdepthmaybetheresnorightanswerafterallmaybeitsalreadybeyondrepairmaybeitllsolveitselfmaybeitsimpossible_

Her body is silently screaming as she drags herself to the edge She  
inhales sharply and pushes, pushes, stretches muscles She  
reaches down beneath the pier And

takes the short girl's hand.


	5. school

Today, two girls one tall one short both dressed all in black are in a school. It took a lot of walking down the railroad to get here but here it is, a school, sat squat on a sea of concrete.

They’re in class like any good girls should be at this time of day. The tall one is running her fingers across the glass of the window– it seems to vibrate gently when she does, letting out a low, sad sort of hum.

“What’s your best subject?” asks the short one. She’s sat down at a desk, peering around to see if anything’s hiding inside.

“Psychogeography.”

“Come on, that’s not a real thing…”

“Sure it is. You’ve never heard of psychogeography before?”

The short one goes to lift up the desk. The wood collapses under her fingers into something like kinetic sand, squashing into strange shapes beneath her fingertips, cascading with half the desk into an odd pile on the floor.

“…Obviously.” She gets up to try another desk, kicking the rest of this one over into a pile of wood-sand and metal-sand and plastic-sand.

“It’s, you know… It’s a Debord thing.”

“Ah fuck, not a Debord thing.”

“Yeah, it’s sort of like… well, it’s sort of like what we do, kind of. It’s a way to explore a city’s… soul and stuff. Uh, it’s kind of complicated to explain…”

“Because it’s Debord. I tried reading that one about spectacles, it’s the most academic mind-melting bullshit I’ve ever seen. Couldn’t even understand the first page.”

“Well you gotta really think about it.”

The tall one’s moved onto a standing lamp near the teacher’s desk. It’s on and the bulb glows, but it’s not hot. It keeps glowing even when she unscrews it.

“Then just TRY to explain psychogeography to me, since you’re such an expert,” says the short one, rollling her eyes and flopping down at another desk. The wood grain on this one is kind of wrong. Just kind of wrong.

“Well–” The tall one pauses, lifting the glowing bulb and taking a bite. The glass shatters gently like sugar, allowing the thick sweet glowing innards to flow like honey into her mouth. “Mm. Look I’m not gonna deny there’s a lot of horseshit about it. You know, philosophy and all that. But the point is you just kinda wander around cities. Without a goal in mind, no destination, you just wander and let the city carry you. I think, anyway.”

“And this is your favorite subject in school? This thing you barely understand?” The wood grain is so thin and so, so much. It seems to curl into spiral shapes here and there. The short one gets a feeling and glances up to see a dark shape slither past the frosted glass of the door– a Teacher. Maybe they’re off to do some psychogeography.

“…Not really. I just thought it sounded cool. You got me. My favorite subject was theater.”

“Theater!” The short one gets up on the desk, putting a hand to her chest and proclaiming dramatically once more. “Theater!”

“Theater.” The tall one bites off the rest of the bulb before licking up the light that’s still left at the bottom like an ice cream cone. “I like improv.”

“Yeah, I doubt you could keep a script straight,” snarks the shorter, hopping onto another desk. This one’s sort of rubbery. Maybe a rubbery guy sat there and wrote on rubbery paper with a rubbery pencil. Would he erase it with graphite?

“I can’t keep anything straight. I’ve never been straight in my life.”

“Touché.”

“So? What was your favorite subject?”

“English,” replied the short one, stepping over to tap on the whiteboard. Cold like glass. Strange timbre to it. Maybe… “…Easy as fuck, English class. Basically all you have to do is sound really enthusiastic and they assume you did the work. I barely ever read anything.”

“Seems like kind of a waste.”

“My life is kind of a waste.”  
The short one’s wearing a backpack, and she takes it off, rooting around inside. “But I do like to write. It’s hard, but I like it. If I wanted to be a productive member of society, that’s probably what I’d end up doing.”

“Societyyyyy.”

“Society!” proclaims the short one the same way as ‘Theater,’ holding up a ballpeen hammer.

“What are you gonna do with that?” asks the tall one curiously, kneeling down and watching the lamp’s power cable writhe around on the floor like an indecisive snake.

“Psychogeography!”  
With that, the short one smacks the hammer against the whiteboard, hard. Cracks appear, then start to spread. Suddenly something begins spraying out of the fissures, coating the short one in ivory fluid.

“Haha, it’s like a sex thing,” observes the tall one, and then the whole whiteboard breaks. White floods the room, sending the short girl stumbling backwards as the tank behind the glass empties out. The tall one stands upon the teacher’s podium and lifts the spluttering short one up, squashing her against her chest and laughing.

“Well, looks like you broke Debord.”


	6. city

Two girls one tall one short both dressed all in black have made their way beyond the asphalt desert, the seemingly endless parking lot that surrounded the school. There, the lines denoting parking spaces curled into strange glyphs that hurt to look at, and some of the shapes gave rise to speculation about what kind of vehicle could fit there. 

Eventually though they've made it past, into the big city. Skyscrapers loom all around them as they travel down the cramped street, silent for a while save for their footsteps.

"...It's all cardboard."

The short one's the first one to talk. She walks up to one of the towering buildings, running her hand along its coarse surface and letting her fingers bump over the bits of packing tape.

"Isn't this just an episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy?" asks the tall one, exhaling cannabis vapor into the quiet air. 

"It is, but I wish you wouldn't draw attention to it." The short one's circled her way around the building, peering in through one of the cut-out windows. It's unusually dark inside, and there are jumbled piles of... something. Like guts-- electronic, or organic? "Just because you lampshade it doesn't mean it's clever. You're still just taking something wholesale."

"I guess..." replies the tall one uncertainly, poking her finger through the empty cut-out eyehole in one of the flat cardboard citizens that litter the streets, forever motionless. "I don't think it's something to be ashamed of, though. I mean maybe if you're trying to sell your story for money, but..."

"If it's just for fun, it's fine to plagiarize?" asks the short one, circling around the building again before finding a good place to climb, using the empty window as a foothold.

"It's not plagiarism, really. It's just exploring an idea that interests you." The tall one pauses to take a long sip from her sweet sick-ass vape rig yolo weed 420, exhaling a vaporous sigh into the air. "Taking what you see in someone else's work and toying with it, seeing how it ticks, diving deeper into it than they had the chance to."

The short one just grunts in response, peering in the second story window. A single Ouya sits abandoned in the middle of the floor, surrounded by fruit-flavored Tootsie Rolls.

"You're the writer, I thought you'd sympathize." The tall one sits down at the makeshift bus stop, examining a poorly-written help wanted ad for a 'temporary secretary.'

"Alright, look, you're not totally wrong," says the short one, her voice carrying down from three stories up. Disappointingly, this one's empty. "Like all art, writing is largely about taking ideas you've absorbed from your life and other art and putting them together in your own way. This is just sort of a... lazier, more direct version of that."

"I don't think it's lazy," insists the tall one, drumming her fingers to the tune of a song she'd been reminded of. "I think it's just fun. It's playful. Just like fanfiction, you're taking compelling ideas you enjoy and messing around with them in your own way. It's never going to turn out the same as the original author's work, so it's valuable, right? If nothing else, it's a good way to practice that isn't too stressful."

"Yeah, whatever." The short one knows she's lost, but she hates being wrong. Fourth story now, and the skyscraper is getting a little wobbly. She peeks behind her, gauging how she'd jump to the next building if this one started to collapse. "Just stop with the fourth wall stuff, it's so played out. Next you're gonna mention how our designs are totally lifted from somebody else's OCs."

"Sssshhh," hisses the tall one, waving her hands. "Don't go there! It's not a visual medium, nobody has to know how we're imagined!"

"Yeah yeah. Ooooh..." This floor has something that _definitely_ interests her. She looks around for a way in, but there's only the little windows; she'll have to tear herself a door without making the whole thing collapse.

"What are you doing up there?" calls the tall one from below, raising her eyebrows at the messy noise of ripping cardboard. "You're gonna hurt yourself."

"Shut up, you'll never guess what I found!"

"What?"

There's no response for a moment-- and then suddenly something is tossed out from the high window. A flurry of clattering noises like raining poker chips erupts all around her, and the tall one gawks at the street before bursting out laughing.

"It's raining Pogs! Hallelujah!"


	7. stairs

Two girls one short one tall both dressed all in black are ascending an endless staircase, all grey floors and grey walls and tiny slit windows. They'd found the tower in the middle of the cardboard city, seemingly stretching up into infinity, one perfectly straight rod of uniform thickness.

They had been going for some time now, pausing to rest, vape, sleep, fuck and eat. Whenever they get hungry or thirsty, there always seems to be a landing just around the bend with a vending machine like this one waiting for them.

"Aw, man... It's all mixed nuts," the short one sulks, peering around through the glass as though a hoagie will appear any moment now. 

"What's wrong with mixed nuts?" The tall one is crunching on some salted pistachios, squatting like a yankee up against the window.

"They're so DRY. Plus when they're mixed up, half the shit is stuff I don't even like. How come you got the only thing of pistachios?"

"I dunno, there was just this one. You want some?"

"No, I don't wanna share." She huffs, begrudgingly entering the 9-digit code for something called 'Dr. Manhattan's Albuquerque-Style Fruit Cashews.' Instead of asking for money, the little dot-matrix screen flashes PLEASE TELL A GOOD JOKE in glaring red letters.

"...What did you tell it?" asks the short one, turning her head to look over at her companion.

"Oh, uh..." The taller one quickly spits the pistachio shells she'd been sucking on into the growing pile beside her, finishing the rest of the nuts in her mouth. Haha, like a sex thing. "I told it the one about the three-legged dog."

"Oh, in the bar?" The taller one nods, and the short one turns back to the monolithic black machine, clearing her throat. "Uh... So a three legged dog walks into a bar and says--"

"He puts his paw up on the counter first," chimes the tall one helpfully, fiddling with her phone.

"Right, shit. Okay, so a three legged dog walks into a bar, puts his paw up on the counter--"

"Wait no, it's his LEG. Otherwise you ruin the joke early."

"Oh for fuck's sake!" The short one grumbles, giving the machine a frustrated kick, which elicits a plaintive whistling noise. "This three-legged dog walks into a bar, puts his LEG up on the counter, and says 'I'm lookin' for the man who shot my paw.'"

She'd put a lot of effort into the voice to make up for her delivery. Instead of dispensing the nutty treat, the machine just honks loudly at her, flashing the words PLEASE ENTER A NEW JOKE.

"For the love of-- We can't even say the same thing!?" 

"I guess it's bored of that one." The taller one is keeping her cool as always, fiddling with her vape and replacing the cartridge.

"Christ, so I have to pull another one?" The short girl's memory is spotty at the best of times. "Okay, uhm... oh, maybe it'll like the ones my dad used to tell me."

"Have those EVER gotten a laugh out of anyone but you?"

"Well he wouldn't have told it to me if he didn't think it was funny too, now would he?" The short one glowers, straightening up to face the machine again. She doesn't have the taller one's acting chops, but she tries her damnedest to give a good delivery. "If you're floating down the river on a concrete slab and all four wheels fall off, how many pancakes can fit in a doghouse?"

Either the vending machine has to think about it or it's just mildly stunned. After a few seconds, a chirping noise accompanies the words I DON'T KNOW, HOW MANY?

"None," declares the short one proudly, "because ice cream has no bones."

A long silence fills the air. The only sound is of the taller girl quietly sipping on her vape.

After a solid thirty seconds of silence, the game over noise from the Price Is Right plays out of a tinny speaker, heralding the words PLEASE TELL A GOOD JOKE once again.

"Fuck you!" The short one growls as the tall one starts laughing, pounding on the glass impotently. "Give me my Dr. Manhattan's Albuquerque-Style Fruit Cashews!"

"What the hell is a fruit cashew?" asks the tall one, exhaling vapor as she speaks.

"I don't know. I thought maybe it was just labeled weird and it would be fruit AND cashews."

"Well you're gonna need to come up with something better. I don't think it'll let me tell it for you."

"What the hell could possibly have given you that impression?"

"Nothing, I just want to see you squirm some more."

"Oh fuck off!" The short one goes red from embarrassment as the tall one snickers, giving the machine another kick. "God damn it... Okay, how about this? Two dogs are sitting in a bathtub--"

"Why has every joke involved dogs so far?"

"Shut up, you're messing me up! Two dogs are sitting in a bathtub. One says, 'Pass the soap!' The other says 'What do I look like, a typewrit--'"

HONK. The machine doesn't even wait this time. PLEASE TELL A GOOD JOKE.

"You didn't even hear the fucking punchline!"

"Yeah it did, that was the whole thing. A typewriter. Look, I don't think non-sequitur is going to be enough to net you Dr. Manhattan's Albuquerque-Style Fruit Cashews. You have to know at least ONE joke that makes some kind of sense."

"O... Of course I do," snaps the shorter one defensively, scowling and leaning up against the machine, gears turning in her head.

"...You sure about that?" asks the taller one after about two minutes, staring at her short companion's shapely thighs from behind.

"AH!" The recollection hits her like a truck. "Course I do, I was just getting it straight in my head! Okay, you stubborn piece of shit, listen to this."

"This oughta be good," says the tall one, propping her chin up and grinning expectantly.

"A guy walks up to the widow at a funeral and asks, 'May I say a word?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Plethora.'

'Thanks, that means a lot.'"

Another silence hangs in the air. Sweat is beading on the short one's brow. Suddenly a laugh track blasts out of the machine's speakers, soon accompanied by the Price Is Right theme proper. The short one pumps her fist, cheering loudly.

"FUCK yeah! I told you I knew o-- OW! SHIT!" She turns around and glares, rubbing her ankle where the machine had shot her with the bag of nuts like a beanbag round from a riot gun. "Motherfucker!"

"Hey, you reap what you sow. Shouldn't have been so mean to it."

"Yeah, whatever..." grumbles the short one, snatching her prize and giving the machine the stink-eye and another kick for good measure before slinking off to sit next to the taller one, who kisses her on the cheek. 

"Congrats, you're a regular Steven Wright."

"It's just something I saw on Twitter one time," mumbles the short one, tearing into the bag to retrieve her bounty. Multicolored cashews spill into her hand like Skittles, making her furrow her brow. "Oh, so they... they are fruit cashews."

"Wow. That doesn't even look that good. After all that effort, too."

"Whatever, I bet it's fine," she snaps, crunching a handful into her mouth. It is not fine. But she won't show it on her face.

"Better luck next time, love." The tall one pats her on the shoulder sympathetically, and the short one gets up in a huff, tossing the bag back at the vending machine and making her way toward the stairs upward.

"Come on, maybe the next one will have some Yummy Mummy."

"If it does, I'll carry you up the whole next flight of stairs."

"Deal."

So they keep climbing, climbing and climbing, further into the distant heavens toward snacks unknown.


End file.
